


Mismatched Pieces

by randomthunk



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Memory Loss, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, and somewhat qualifies for the Whouffaldi First Kiss challenge, vaguely implied relationship things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 10:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5739691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomthunk/pseuds/randomthunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can’t remember her…completely. He remembers bits and pieces, he remembers thoughts and feelings, sometimes sensations and sometimes more, but what he does know is that she can hold his hand and it won’t make him feel ill.</p>
<p>He misses that part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mismatched Pieces

What he remembers is shapes, and outlines, and colors that fade in and out. He can never place the colors to specifics, he can’t recall where the round part is supposed to go or if there’s a wisp of a line that’s supposed to go there. He can almost sketch it out, as a vague idea flashes to the surface of his mind and he rushes to grab a sketchbook and something, anything, to draw with. But he’s left staring at a blank canvas, at a ghosted-over chalkboard, at a plate of spaghetti sauce flecked with oregano and fork scrapings. He’s left with nothing.

Nothing but the memories, at least, and even then he wonders if he should doubt them. There’s a lot in there, a lot stored away worth at least two thousands years, and some of it seems to be so utterly ridiculous and some of it is just so hideously dull so as to be scoffed at. Not a chance those were his. But were…those his too? Or did he lift them from the book he found left behind, a book he didn’t remember taking out or reading, with dog-earred pages that didn’t follow his creasing patterns.

He wonders about that book, tries to recall why it’s there. He can sense something left on the surface of the pages; small pools and traces of a warmth he can almost recall. His skin tingles as he can almost – he can almost place it, it’s right there, and it wants to be brought back -

But then there’s a twitch, and a jolt, and it’s gone.

 

* * *

 

The Doctor couldn’t recall what it felt like to have someone so much as tap his shoulder without the physicality sending errors to his brain. It was annoying on the one hand and embarrassing on the other, to be constantly startled by the people he was trying to save this week, or trying to hide from the next, constantly finding ways to surprise him. He’s not one for surprises, not now, he’s taking a break from them – did he ever like them? Must’ve. Spontaneity seemed like it felt wonderful at some point, but that point has long since passed.

He was once made to shake hands to seal the pact with the governor of a river village on Avanashkir, and that doesn’t go too well. It was a bit more than eyebrow raising he received by the grimace that came to his face, followed by the hiss of pain whistling out his teeth. The contact is dropped by the offense he has committed, and it’s as if his hand has been plunged into soothing ice water to relieve the burn. The Doctor expects steam to rise, for burnt flesh to be revealed, but there is nothing. There is nothing but the churning in his stomach as the governor says something, commands some things – he may be labeled a traitor now, hard to tell when the language contained too many false cognates – and the only solution is to run and leave the bickering villages to figure out their own harvest problems.

 

* * *

 

He sometimes finds himself tracing patterns on his own skin. At first it’s his hands wringing each other out, trying to extract whatever glimmers of feelings he can remember, to see if they can be collected and concentrated and either jettisoned away or consumed whole and felt again. Then he finds his fingers clenching his sleeves, his lapels; the grip is not the same, since it’s too big and too boney, but the approximation is such that sensations come back to him. He recalls other touches and glances, feelings he doesn’t need to state, as fingertips ghost up his neck and across his chest, running in circles and loops and straight lines. They write words that make him blush.

Him. The eternal cornerstone of the universe. Blush.

 

* * *

 

The TARDIS hummed at him the way it has for months, maybe even years now. Time wasn’t so well managed or kept track of when there was no one else asking you for it, and he wasn’t too keen on picking someone else up for the long term. (Well, his long term, which was probably too long for most people.) Companions, the Doctor argues to his box, are difficult and messy and they need a box to do their business. Some of them do. The cats do. Cat. Singular. He tried having a cat around once, realized it was a terrible idea, decided to stick to humans. Most of them knew how to use the facilities properly.

Subconsciously, or maybe in the basement of the sub-conscious, he feels a tug at humans, especially at the smaller ones. Not the young small ones, but the full-grown small ones, who ran out of time to keep growing and so were stuck the way they were. There’s a gleam, a glow around the edges, of certain ones that strike him with their features.

They’re pieces and components to the puzzle he has been trying to solve for ages now, at least since that diner in the desert that just sort of vanished around him. They bleed at the edges and stick to the surface. He’s afraid of trying to move them, in fear they’ll rip and blow away. He leaves the pieces as they settle into his mind, as the drawing attempts to take shape. He can sort it out later, when he’s not being lectured by the photography-obsessed human about how staring is rude. She jabs his chest and he  does his best to not physically recoil from the electricity it shoots through his veins. But the wince is noticeable, just enough for this human’s trained eye to see it, and earn himself a comment on how his alien super strength is apparently vulnerable to the human touch.  He wants so very badly to make some kind of snarky comeback, but a voice in his mind tugs at him and tells him to maybe, just maybe, let this one slide.

Where did that voice come from?

 

* * *

 

There’s a time when he stares at the stars and remembers telling stories. He remembers stories about telling stories, and the stories within the stories, and how those stories got additions by the person he was telling them to, and eventually those stories devolved into banter and bickering. The Doctor rolls his eyes at himself and slumps against the frame of the doorway, lowering his brow, and looking at the three star system conjunction taking place. It’s beautiful, something tells him, and also a little sad. Something about how despite the unification of the systems, it’s slightly morose that three have to die in its wake.

The embers of words tinge in his mouth, and he can recall sharing a theory to someone. He can almost picture them, the glow from the stars awash on their clothes and their skin, and the soft peaches and violets from the TARDIS behind them bouncing a reflective light. He can remember the emanation of a physical body, and how it did things to his senses that no longer happen anymore.

And how much he misses it.

 

* * *

 

“This is the Doctor,” the council head says, introducing the wild-eyed but somehow withdrawn Time Lord to the ballroom. “The man responsible for saving my life. He is to be respected at all costs, or you will go from dining with us to being dined on.” The murmuring silence that follows suggests the guests are used to that threat, and it’s really an old one so please get on with it. With a smile and a clap, the council head announces, “Enjoy the festivities.”

He already knew to stay away from the food, but the would-be food doesn’t understand to stay away from him, which is quite a bit more irritating than normal since he’s there on a particular mission. The amulet worn by the council head was the target of the Doctor’s task, and he accidentally saved said council head from a rather nasty nerve gas projectile because the power of the amulet came from the life of the wearer – leave it untouched by living flesh for more than a few seconds and it would cease to support the galaxy contained within the gem and so snuff out the billions of lives in it. It was quite the prison.

He felt he knew something about large prisons contained in small spaces that tortured things in quantities of billions, but that was one of the memories really scrubbed clean. Instead it tended to manifest as a dream, a dream he’d get only every so often when he slept, and he slept so rarely and terribly that it was amazing he dreamed at all. The dream, he figured, was a lot nicer than the prison that inspired it. A large clockwork castle carved from stone, with sweeping hallways and majestic libraries and immense banquet halls; sometimes the grounds were populated with staff and nobles, sometimes he’d be crawled over with children, and sometimes it was but him and one other…one other who would turn to look at him, and smear into strokes of oil paint, sealing themselves to canvas and too blurred for him to understand who it was.

A tap on the shoulder alerted him to pay attention to what was going on in the present world rather than his dreams.

“Are you hungry?” the guest asked, and his eyes did the blurring and pastels thing again. He squinted in response, trying to blink the haze out, and it was at least partially successful in that he could look at the guest and not seem like he was on the verge of sneezing. She – it was a woman, yes, if going by the way the shapes were put together and the pitch of her voice – and she was offering him a plate of food. Hors d'oeuvres, probably, since they had toothpicks protruding from them, and as much as he fancied a tiny sword or umbrella, the soylent green aspect of the pieces weren’t forgotten.

“Can’t really do soylent green, strictly dietary,” he replied, and her lips curled into a smile. This time her lips bleed, their pink oozing to her skin as he held his hand up to his eyes to curb the visual dysophoria. This was definitely one of the bad cases of ‘fill in the blank’, which was always hard to play since he was lacking a word bank.

“Me neither – less the diet, more the ethical concerns.” The woman passed off her plate to a frazzled waiter before turning to face the Doctor properly. “You saved the council head?” she asked, her smile turning bemused. “You seem to be doing well for yourself.”

“It seems to have put me into a position of bargaining power,” he answered carefully, looking anywhere but her face. The colors were hazing and burning too much for him to focus properly. “Bargaining for what, I’m not sure yet.”

“Your life, maybe?” the woman says, stepping off a few paces before looking back at him and indicating with her head to follow. The Doctor can sort of make out the gesture – he at least can understand the movement – and follows slowly, brows furrowed, resuming 'owl mode’ as he had so been thanked by the council head upon first realization of the whole 'accidental life saving’ act. Speaking of…

“My life?” the Doctor repeats. The woman nods, turning around and continuing to walk, but backwards, facing him in return.

“You do a good thing, you get a point in your favor. Do a bad thing, and use the power from the good thing to persuade your way out of it.” She’s leaning forward a bit, and a sharp crescendo of blue swells and bursts in his vision. He jams the one eye shut and inhales, refocuses, stares directly at this blur of a woman, nodding. She smiles, cracks a grin – he thinks, there’s some kind of teeth shape in there or something – and she continues on. “Don’t stray too far from the center because otherwise you gain a reputation and people start to expect things from you. Take the risks, imagine the upset, live the upset when you need to, but otherwise tiptoe around the upset and pull off the risk.”

He leans his head back, curious of her words, and also impressed at her ability to navigate through the people she doesn’t see (or that see her and decide it’s best to just move and not cause a fuss). “Sounds a bit on-balance. You’d rather not be known for the good things?”

She makes a sharp turn and he follows, brushing against an ambassador, shuddering at the fire ants that seem to creep on his shoulder. “You can’t always determine the good things,” she says, and gives a shrug. “And you can’t promise them either. It’s best to not make promises. They’re hard to keep. So just make general plans instead, and see how many you can check off before the day is done. If they’re good ones, then more power to you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “And if they’re bad ones?”

It’s at that point he notices they have wound their way around the ballroom, him entranced at this blurry woman’s words, and are once again by the council head. He can’t quite decipher what happens – it doesn’t help that he can barely make out one of the figures involved – but suddenly the woman is close in his field of vision, a shape of gold and an odd black rainbow orb present on what he assumes is her neck, and there is shouting…lots of shouting.

There’s a sweeping wave of nausea settling over him as guards and other folks with a personal investment in the amulet that now sits on this woman’ collarbone descend upon the two, and the first contact he feels is a firm squeeze on his hand.

“Depends on what kind of bad we’re talking.”

There’s a tug and his legs move before his brain tells his body to react. Running, oh yes, running; running is a very familiar thing that he apparently still can’t do very well. The woman who stole the amulet is clenching his hand tightly and running while dragging him along too. He should stop this, he should hate this – well, okay, it’s more complicated than that, since he was after the galaxy-in-a-jewel-prison-amulet too, and he wasn’t sure how good his bargaining skills were going to be with this one – but he can’t, doesn’t want to, doesn’t have it in him to do so.

They make their way down a hall and take a hard swing to the right, the voices of rather upset pursuers close enough behind that they can’t quit yet. Down another hall, a left, to the staircase rather than through the window, and rapidly punching their feet down stairs. The Doctor is caught up with her now, keeping pace as they run side by side, hands still clenched tight together, his fingers itching and wiggling to weave together with hers, and -

Wait that’s not right.

He never thought he’d complain about missing certain things: Gallifrey, income tax, Crystal Pepsi. And he’s definitely not complaining, not right now, but he has to point out to himself: there’s no fire scorching up his arm, or intense vibration making his fingers numb, or bees swarming in his hands, or nausea rattling his stomach. The only thing that hurts are her short fingernails digging into his skin that he’d much rather have between his fingers and digging into his palm.

Rather what he feels is…what he assumes everyone else must feel: not hurt by physical touch, but comforted by it, thriving on it. He feels at peace.

Which is an odd way to feel when you throw yourself into a service corridor and decide to catch a breath since you can no longer hear your pursuers, but it’s when he takes another look that it hits him.

“Clara,” he says. It’s a flat tone, noncommittal; not curious nor hopeful but a declaration, a statement of fact. He blinks and the colors recede, the bleed squeezes back in as she looks up and over at him. “Clara,” he says again, his hand still clenching hers and squeezing it tightly. She raises her eyebrows before her lips lift into a smile.

“Clara,” he said one more time, taking a step forward as the shapes ease into place. The fog seeps away from his mind and the mental canvas begins to paint itself back together. There’s a pleasant warmth pooling in him, bubbling to his head and spilling into his mouth. It emanates from their hands, clasped tight, warm and confident and reassuring and hopeful and committed.

“Clara,” he repeats, as she lifts herself up and grins. Her eyes are soft, though, like they still weep for something, like they still long for something. But she reaches up with her free hand and gently places her palm to his cheek.

“Doctor,” she says, and it’s all probably a bit too much. Those large eyes, the round things, are getting even bigger and rounder and possibly wet. She licks her lips and that’s it, that’s the thing, that’s where he gives up.

When people have records and files of the Doctor, there’s certain traits that the ones who created those records tend to remember. With this one, it was often remembered that the man had a rather crabby exterior and a fierce predatorial look, slightly like a velociraptor if they were on Earth and the person felt it apt to compare him to an ancient bird-lizard. Nowhere would anyone think to put a warning of 'kisses pretty intensely so watch out’.

His thumbs under her eyes paint the rosy cheeks in his mental portrait. His fingers sweep down the side of her skull, grazing her ears, tracing her jaw before shifting back up and sinking themselves in her hair. Strand by strand they fill in, some copper, some blonde, some ebony and some a kind of bark color; soon the hair is filled in and her eyes flutter close, lashes grazing his thumb and carving themselves into the canvas.

Her lips are soft but seem to be in need of chapstick after the evening is over, tingling on his or maybe his are tingling; actually that makes more sense and he just presses himself closer to her as she compacts herself to him. There’s a low rumbling in his chest that pulses out and reflects her back in what little space is left between them. Her soft exhale shapes her throat and in his mind’s eye, he can see it, see her, see the missing piece of the void that has been in him for countless ages.

It ends only because it has to, and it has to because there’s shouting coming from down the hall and a bit to the left. Clara pulls away and giggles as she watches his eyes flutter open, his cheeks burning red and a bit of her lipstick staining his mouth.

“You’ve gotten better,” she teases before grabbing his lapel, one handed, and yanking him down to give one more, albeit sloppy, kiss to him. “But we should run before we engage in that again.”

He doesn’t nod, or speak, or give a thumbs up. He blinks. He blinks to clear up the last of the blurry colors that were left straggling as they filled in. He blinks to confirm that this is real without giving it away too much that he was confirming it to be real.

He blinks before suddenly grabbing her hand, cracking a grin, and leading the charge down the hall.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written/posted like a day after Hell Bent aired, and since then bits and pieces have come out from the actors and such that reveal maybe 12 didn't really forget everything, or anything, or what have you. But that doesn't make much sense to me - 12 literally had to have his memories removed in order for him to move on. I like to think they're sitting in stasis and when the time is right and he sees Clara again, he will be ready for her, and the universe will be ready for them too.


End file.
